For whatever reason, people eat a lot of soup when sick. Especially the canned stuff, since the invalid is feeling too lethargic to put together real soup. Having just gotten over the flu, and with Gwen ping-ponging back and forth, there’s been a fair amount of soup consumption in our lives lately. A lot of canned soup.
But here’s the thing: it’s a terrible over-extension of the word “soup” to use it to describe both the stuff that comes in a can or styrofoam container, and the stuff you actually make yourself. The two things really have very little in common, I’ve decided.
As of last night, Gwen was still sick, and when she asked what I could bring over food-wise, she suggested we could have soup. I’m not much of a cook, but I’d be damned if I had another can of Progresso or whatever. Bleah. Off to Central Market, where I assembled ingredients for something vaguely Thai-like. Okay it had lemongrass and ginger and cilantro and shrimp, and some other stuff. That’s about as Thai as my unculinary Jewish ass can get. It wound up being pretty good. A damn sight better than anything coming out of a package.
DO share the recipe! I’m a soup-nut, myself… I tend to get packages of dehydrated noodles by the boatload from oriental markets or ramencity.com… (they come with the correct spices and are dirt cheap). Then I’ll enhance the concoction with whatever meat and vegetables I’m in the mood for at the time.
My brother makes a shrimp gumbo that’ll curl your toes (but I think he starts with a Zataran mix).
I made a butternut squash soup the other night that was interesting: link.
Here’s the link from last comment:
http://www.meals.com/RecipeCenter/RecipeCard.aspx?RecipeID=6343
David–
I wouldn’t quite say that there was a recipe: there were ingredients that looked good. The soup contained the following:
A box of chicken soup stock
.5 lb shrimp, already cooked and shelled
1 big carrot, chopped
1 big celery stalk, chopped
A lobe of ginger, sliced fine
2 stalks lemon grass, sliced into knuckle-sized bits.
3 (?) fresh hot peppers, de-seeded and chopped
1 onion, chopped fine
Some dried lime leaves
About 1/4 lb mushrooms (nothing exotic) sliced
Directions: Add all ingredients at once. Bring the whole thing to a slow boil. Let boil for a few minutes. Eat.
Cilantro was added when serving.
Get well soon wishes to Gwen.
/asl
I make several very nice soups from scratch – lentil being my best. But recently I have discovered a quick and easy soup from a mix. The mix is from Taste of Thai or maybe that’s House of Thai found at HEB or Central Market. The picture on the package shows an orange soup. I add one package of the seasoning mix to one can of light coconut milk and stir until well blended. Next I add a cup or so of vegetable stock, a cup of cooked rice, mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper, tofu – whatever I have available. Bring to a boil then serve. There is a lot of ginger in this soup and the broth is just spicy enough that I think it would be helpful to open up your head while sick – but not too spicy to bother the stomach. I have made the soup 3 times now with different ingredients each time. I have had one very vivid dream about this soup in anticipation of the next days bowl that I put aside for my lunch. If you try it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
Yum!
— And there are lots of folks I would use the word unculinary to describe before I would use that word on you!